


Proxy War

by flibbertygigget



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Depression, F/M, Inspired by the recent Rebels episodes with Obi-Wan and Maul and shit, Masturbation, Pining, Post-Revenge of the Sith, Two broken people trying to put each other back together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8916493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbertygigget/pseuds/flibbertygigget
Summary: Ventress and Kenobi try to put themselves back together again as the galaxy is plunged into Darkness.





	

Sometimes, in the dark lonely bowels of her ship, caught in the dreamy depths of hyperspace, Ventress remembers him.

Kenobi. His voice, coaxing her away from Dooku like she was some scared animal. His light, bright and pure and so so fragile. His saber, how it felt when they were pressed so close that it burned her skin. Her hands would wander over the remembered patches, not scarred like so much of her but not the same either.

In the silence of her ship she made love to him.

There were many ways she imagined it. Perhaps, at long last, he would defeat her and, instead of killing her, he would demand some boon for his victory and take her then and there. Perhaps he would find her, hunt her down as she did, and torture her in the one way that she could never bring herself to touch him. Or perhaps - and this was the greatest secret of all, the one fantasy that she had no right to - perhaps, when he found her, he would again try to bring her to the light. Perhaps she would listen, and on their way back to home, they would make love.

She didn't imagine that last so very often.

For the most part, she stayed on her ship. She left only to obtain food and fuel and parts, and of course to take the occasional job. It was on one of those jobs that she heard the news that shocked her to her core.

Darth Maul was alive, and he was searching for Obi-Wan Kenobi.

* * *

Tatooine had never been her favorite planet. Oh, it was good enough for the occasional job, but she never imagined actually _living_ on it. But Kenobi had apparently decided that the planet was fit to be his home - or perhaps, his place of exile.

Exile. Like her ship, his Tatooine was an in-between place, moored neither in the past (past, blood and pain and betrayal) nor in the possibility of the future (future, uncertain, a place she dared not look towards). Was his exile out of necessity, on the run from the Empire, or, like her, was he making his own penance in the absence of any other?

When she found him, he was burdened.

He looked terrified to see her, weaponless and defenseless though she was. He seemed to have aged twice as fast as she had, his hair nearly completely white and his face lined, weatherbeaten. Still, she thought that he could easily make her surrender.

"Maul is alive," she said before he could say anything. Kenobi blinked.

"Is that so?" he said. There was something wrong in his voice. Where was the sarcasm, the teasing, the bantering tone that had never left him even when she made him bleed? For the first time, Kenobi sounded broken. "Well, I'll be sure to keep an eye out for him." He turned, a clear dismissal.

"I can help you." He froze, and then he turned.

"Why?" he said. Ventress didn't know the answer.

"I can help you," she said. "You can come on my ship." He looked surprised.

"Why would you want to help me?" he asked. Ventress didn't answer.

* * *

Her ship was not meant to hold two people. There was the cockpit, the sleeping quarters, and a small cargo hold. She gave Kenobi the sleeping quarters and took a blanket to the pilot's seat. The endless swirling mess of hyperspace lulled her to sleep.

They didn't talk to each other much. They were both too accustomed to the silence of their own heads to desire it. For the most part Kenobi kept to the back of the ship. Every so often she would look back towards him, bringing food as an excuse, and he would inevitably be meditating with a look of pain on his face. Once, one of the few times he came up to the cockpit, she decided to ask him.

"What are you meditating on?" she said.

"My failures," he said, and then he would not speak anymore.

It was about Skywalker, she knew. No one quite knew what had happened the day that the Republic was turned into the Empire, but everyone knew that the Jedi had been destroyed. Kenobi, by some miracle, had survived, but Ventress knew that Skywalker had likely not been so lucky.

"It was not your failure," she said. "It was the failure of those who betrayed the Jedi." Even though they were dead and gone now, she still hated them. But for his sake, she would try to comfort him.

"That betrayal is my fault as well," he said. Ventress decided not to press anymore.

Eventually they would need to find a job, she knew that. She also knew that Kenobi would not approve of the types of jobs that she found. Killings, kidnappings, the occasional theft. She did not want that confrontation, though she knew it was inevitable. But when she told him that they would be stopping, that she was going to find a job to do, he didn't blink.

She did not understand how the same man who had always seemed so weak and kind, how the same man who kept trying to save her, could be so calm about her profession. Perhaps the destruction of the Jedi had done to him what the war never had.

* * *

She had asked around, and it seemed that Maul had discovered that Kenobi was no longer on Tatooine. Ventress could only hope that he wouldn't think that he would be residing with his former enemy, but she had never had much faith in hope or the Force. When she returned to her ship, the memory of the dead Andorian fresh in her mind, she threw one of her lightsabers on Kenobi's lap.

"What is this?" he said.

"I would have thought that you would know, Kenobi," she said.

"Of course," he said, sounding faintly annoyed and more like himself than he had since the last time they had fought. "What I meant to ask was why you are giving it to me."

"You're out of practice," she said. Truth be told, she was as well, but she wasn't about to tell him that. "If Maul finds us, I don't want you to die too easily."

"And why do you care?" Kenobi said, standing and opening the saber with a soft hum. She didn't answer, just unsheathing her own weapon and attacking.

They had to be careful. The space was small, and the hull of her ship was thin. All the same, the fight was... exhilarating.

Ventress hadn't realized how dead she had been. Her pulse was racing, her breath was coming out in pants, and yet she was smiling, laughing as they whirled in macabre symphony. Kenobi gasped as her weapon singed his robes, but no, he didn't need to worry, her control was complete. She was alive in a way that she couldn't explain, only revel in, soaking in every moment that she could in his aura.

His aura.

Ventress paused. It was only for a moment, but he saw it, and he took full advantage of the opportunity that she had accidentally presented. Even as he beat her back, she couldn't help but ponder at her revelation. His aura in the Force was surrounding her, intoxicating, _beautiful_. She didn't know how she could have missed it all the times that they had fought before.

"You win," she said, and the admission wasn't nearly as galling as it ought to have been. She may have lost the fight, but she had been able to feel him in the Force, and in that she was undoubtedly the winner.

She left his quarters and flung herself into the pilot's chair. She would have to meditate.

* * *

The next time that they talked, Kenobi was the one to come to her. When he sat in the copilot's seat beside her, she didn't give any indication that she noticed him. Part of her was afraid that, if she did, he would flee like a spooked womprat. Another part of her was afraid that she would do the same.

"You never did answer my question," he said.

"What?" she said, confused by the seemingly random statement.

"When you found me on Tatooine. I asked you a question. You never answered it." He turned, and no matter how hard she tried she couldn't help but meet his eyes. "Why did you want to help me? Why would you ever want to help me?" She tried to buy time by pretending to check the instruments, but that could only last so long.

"You started it," she said. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "During the war. You would always try to pull me back. You didn't kill me, even though it was your duty. You helped me then. I don't forget a debt."

"You don't owe me anything, Ventress," he said with a sigh. She shook her head. He didn't understand. How could he? He was her opposite in every way.

"I owe you everything," she said. He looked surprised, and she felt anger, sharp and molten, flare within her. "I was too blind to see that I was just a pawn to Dooku. You made me realize that. You made me realize that, while the Jedi may have abandoned my Master, they were still a thousand times more loyal than the Sith. You saved my life. You deserve-"

"You have no idea what I deserve." The bitter self-hatred in his voice made Ventress sit up straighter. There was something here that she was missing, something that could, perhaps, explain why he had turned from a beacon of light to a man shrouded in... not darkness. Obi-Wan Kenobi could never be dark. But he was no longer the Jedi Master she had fought during the war.

"Tell me then," she said, challenged.

"You will hate me. What I've done-" She snorted.

"Kenobi, I doubt that anything a _Jedi_  like you could do would shock me. Remember, I have served the Sith. I have seen Darkness, and it has no hold on /you/." She couldn't understand why her words sounded more fond that disdainful.

"There are worse things than falling to the Dark Side." The air seemed to freeze in her lungs.

"Like what?" she said.

"Like leading someone you love to fall instead." Ventress's mind was racing. She couldn't imagine who Kenobi could be talking about. Yoda? Windu? Windu, she knew, was dead, and Yoda was powerful enough that she would have felt him turn. Skywalker? Nonsense. She couldn't imagine _him_ , of all people, abandoning his Master.

"What happened?" she said softly. Kenobi gazed out at the stars, determined not to let go of his Jedi stoicism. "Who did this to you?"

"Vader," he said, voice breaking. Ventress felt a shiver go down her spine.

No one knew where the man had come from. Privately, she had sometimes wondered whether he was just a droid. There was certainly no indication otherwise, except for his terrifying mastery of the Force. But if Kenobi had lead him to fall...

"Who is Vader?" she said. "Who could have possibly-" Kenobi shook his head, and she fell silent.

"It doesn't matter," he said, though the look on his face said the opposite. "My friend is dead. What remains - What is called Darth Vader is just a shell."

Ventress understood. Force help her, she understood why he didn't explain what had happened, why he held onto the idea that Vader was different from his friend who had fallen. They all did what it took to survive.

* * *

They flew from planet to planet. They sparred. They took the occasional job, with Kenobi occasionally joining her. He said that it was to keep her from the Dark Side, but Ventress suspected the he enjoyed the chance to leave the ship as much as she did. They found a routine amidst it all, and gradually the feeling of danger faded.

Maul had not found them yet, and Ventress was beginning to wonder if he ever would. They were hardly conspicuous, just two bounty hunters travelling in a trash heap of a ship. Eventually Ventress began to wonder what would happen next, now that the danger seemed to have fallen away.

"Do you want to go after Vader?" she asked him one evening as they stared out at the stars. He looked intensely sorrowful.

"I had the chance to kill him once," he said. "I couldn't bring myself to. I doubt I could do it even now." She nodded, accepting it.

Some days she wondered if they ought to try to do something for the galaxy. The Rebellion could make use of them, and she was sure that any surviving Jedi would easily rally to Kenobi's banner. Other days she wondered if the tension that she had felt so many times when they had fought during the war, that she was beginning to feel again, could turn into something more, something concrete. But, then again, perhaps their days of battle and glory were gone.

Perhaps this journey would be their last, and it would be enough.


End file.
